Fla. Education Commissioner OK with Polk testing changes

Friday

Jul 6, 2018 at 10:35 AMJul 6, 2018 at 8:30 PM

State education head says no need for investigation into Polk, 2 other districts, for procedure used on standardized testing.

BARTOW — Florida Education Commissioner Pam Stewart said there was no evidence Polk County Public Schools or two other Florida districts had violated standardized testing rules as they had been suspected by a group of six legislators calling for investigations.

The legislators suspected Polk, Manatee and Duval county school districts were gaming middle school civics standardized test scores as fewer students took the test in the 2017-18 school year than in the 2016-17 school year. The average scores were much higher in 2017-18.

Polk County officials, and officials in other districts, said the count of test takers was the result of changes in the curriculum that shifted civics, the course, from the seventh grade to eighth grade, giving students more time and experience before taking the civics end-of-course exam deemed a crucial measure by the state government. U.S. history, which was taught in the eighth grade, was moved to the seventh grade curriculum.

"We're making sure that they're prepared," Superintendent Jacqueline Byrd said Friday. "The students weren't ready for it in the seventh grade."

Some students will still take the test in seventh grade, those with strong reading skills which are seen as necessary for succeeding on the test, district staff told The Ledger. They expect roughly the same number of seventh graders to take the next next year, district spokesman Jason Geary said in an email.

Byrd said the curriculum shift was the result of a teaching workgroup determining that civics required more foundational education for students to fully grasp.

With the change, teachers said the students "were prepared to walk in the door and teachers can begin teaching without a lot of background building."

A related shift was done to Algebra I, another state priority, which allows some students to take it over two years before taking the end-of-course exam.

Byrd said the shift had nothing to do with saving the six so-called "turnaround schools," which were under pressure to improve their letter grades, or to align curriculum with the test — a component of the state's complex school grade algorithm.

"It had nothing to do with that pressure" from the tests, Byrd told The Ledger.

"We started looking at our students early on and talking to teachers," she said, and answering the question "Where is the best place for this curriculum?"

Stewart agreed with the districts' moves.

In a July 3 letter to the six legislators — Reps. Jason Fischer, Michael Bileca, James Grant, Bob Rommel and Jennifer Sullivan, and Sen. Dennis Baxley — Stewart said it is the districts' right to shift the curriculum within the middle grades, but the law "does not specify a particular grade level."

"Further, statutory flexibility for when civics must be taken by a student, is consistent with many other courses, such as Algebra I, Geometry and Biology I," Stewart wrote.

The change in the curriculum produces a one-year lag. The normal number of students counted taking the test is expected to increase next year as the students catch up to the curriculum.

Stewart pointed to other districts that have done the same thing in recent years, including the Osceola, Levy, Bradford, Hamilton and Sarasota county school districts.

"Based on earlier data from other districts, we would expect the number of test takers to return to historical levels in each district in 2018-19," Stewart wrote, "since middle school students must eventually take the Civics EOC (end-of-course exam) before entering high school."

Beyond stating that she believed there was no wrongdoing, Stewart added that she thought the curriculum shifts where appropriate.

"While educational decisions are by their nature unique to student needs, data we have from other districts indicates that in some cases, delaying the year a civics course is taken in middle school can result in more students passing the exam and, thus, can be an educationally sound decision," Stewart said.

Byrd said the gap in the number of students who take the test each year, 7,358 in 2016-17 and 2,979 in 2017-18, will resolve itself as students work their way through the grades and catch up to the new curriculum.

Christopher Guinn can be reached at Christopher.Guinn@theledger.com or 863-802-7592.

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